Rawan Aleku, a 16-year-old Syrian Kurdish high school student, has been missing from her hometown of Dirbasiya since Oct 8. In multiple interviews with the local press, her father, Umran, claimed that she was kidnapped by an armed group who then handed the girl to “another group.” He has appealed to Mazlum Kobane, the commander-in-chief of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the “highest authority” in northeast Syria, “to undertake his humanitarian duty.”

“Return my daughter Rawan Aleku to me, if you are honest. The pain of her disappearance is killing me. I’m fighting to get her back whatever it costs me, even my life,” Umran wrote in a Facebook post Nov. 10.

Rawan is among dozens of minors who have been either willingly or forcibly recruited by Kurdish rebels to fight in battles spanning Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, all home to large Kurdish minorities. Kurds have long accepted that some of their sons and daughters would have to be given up to the “cause” — to wrest their rights from brutal regimes that have denied their existence and bloodily silenced those who dared to call themselves Kurds. Lovingly framed photographs of “martyred” children in their uniforms are proudly displayed in many a home. Families of the fallen are accorded a privileged status. But in northeast Syria, the mood is shifting as a growing number of Kurds aspire to a more stable life away from war. And a handful of parents like Umran are beginning to air their resentment publicly.

Between God and a hard place